About the Science, Technology & Business
Division

Mural of
Thomas Jefferson in the
Science and Business Reading Room

The Science, Technology & Business Division's primary responsibilities
are to provide reference and bibliographic services and to develop
the general collections of the Library in all areas of science, technology,
business and economics, with the exception of clinical medicine and
technical agriculture, which are the subject specialties of the National
Library of Medicine and the National Agricultural Library respectively.
In addition, the Division also maintains, services, and develops
its own specialized collections of technical reports, standards and
international gray literature in the same subject areas mentioned
above.

The scientific, business and technical materials for which
the Division has collection development responsibility comprise roughly
40 per cent of the Library's total book and journal collection. Reference
services based on these collections are provided to users in person
at the reference desks of the Science
Reference Services and Business
Reference Services, or by telephone, correspondence, or electronic
mail. Indirect reference service is provided through bibliographic
guides and research reports prepared by Division subject specialists
and reference librarians, or from materials on the Division's web
pages. The Book
Service Desk, where requests for materials from the Library's
general collections may be submitted; computer terminals, providing
access to the Library's holdings; and photocopy machines, are available
in the Center Room just outside of the reading room.

The Science and Business Reading Room provides an environment and
a means for their patrons to search, locate, and use scientific, business,
and technical information in the collections of the Library of Congress.
Science and business reference librarians thoroughly familiar with
the indexes, online catalogs, computerized databases, CD-ROMs, and
reference sources available in the Division, other locations in the
Library of Congress, the Washington area, and indeed, throughout
the world, are ready to assist readers with their inquiries and searches.
Important collections maintained in the Science and Business Reading
Room include extensive collections of Abstracting and Indexing services
in hardcopy, on CD-ROM and available in electronic databases.

In the science and technology fields, such series as Chemical
Abstracts, Physics Abstracts, Biological Abstracts, Science
Citation Index, Environmental Abstracts, Zoological Record, Engineering
Index, Index Medicus, and a plethora of more specialized
subject indexes are available. In addition, the science reference
collection includes an outstanding collection of scientific and
technical English and foreign language dictionaries as well as
a vertical file of materials on current and popular scientific
topics.

In the business/economics segment of the reference collection, the
patron can find such items as current business journals, a microfiche
collection of corporation annual reports and proxy statements (both
recent and retrospective, some going back as far as 1847), the Dun
and Bradstreet Million Dollar Directory, the American Statistics
Index (ASI), Index to International Statistics (IIS), the
Statistical Reference Index (SRI), the Index of Economic Articles,
the Predicast's F&S Indexes to Corporations (United States,
International, and Europe), Daily Stock Price Records (New
York Stock Exchange, Over the Counter, and NASDAQ), Value
Line Investment Survey, the Wall Street Journal Index, FIS
Online, and Business Dateline (featuring full-text articles
from over 200 regional U.S. journals and newspapers). Comprehensive
reference collections of directories covering major industries such
as banking and insurance, a large collection of biographical reference
works covering all fields, and statistical abstracts covering most
states and foreign countries are also maintained in the business
area. Of special interest is the extensive and unique collection
of industrial directories, issued by several publishers, for United
States regions, cities, for all the states, and for most foreign
countries.

The institutional origins of the Science, Technology & Business
Division are found in this country's heightened awareness, following
World War II, of the significant increase in the need for current,
reliable, worldwide scientific and technical information. Established
in June 1949 within what was then the Reference Department, the new
Science Division provided a focal point for the acquisition and bibliographic
control of the Library's rapidly growing international collections
in science and technology. During this period, the division administered
several large-scale contracts for the U.S. Navy, Army, and Air Force.
By 1958, the Division had incorporated the various activities of
several other Library units and evolved into the Science and Technology
Division. During the next two decades, the Division continued the
tradition of providing its specialized services under contract to
other government agencies and until recently operated several bibliographic
and research projects for NASA, NSF, and other executive department
agencies. In 1998, the Division's focus was dramatically expanded
when the Science and Technology Division and the Business Reference
Section (originally established as a part of the Library's Humanities
and Social Sciences Division) were merged to form today's Science,
Technology & Business Division.

While the Science, Technology & Business Division is a relatively
new organizational unit, science and business as subjects have been
represented in the Library's collections almost from the start, beginning
with the auspicious purchase of Thomas Jefferson's personal library
in 1815. As would be expected, Jefferson's library contained some
500 volumes in natural philosophy, agriculture, chemistry, zoology,
and technical arts, and an even larger number relating to economics
and commerce. This seminal core was embellished thanks to an Act
of Congress in 1866 which transferred to the Library from the Smithsonian
Institution about 40,000 volumes of memoirs, transactions, and periodicals
of learned scientific societies, museums, exploring expeditions,
and observatories throughout the world. This transfer, since known
as the Smithsonian Deposit, considerably broadened the science collections
and permanently influenced their development.

In addition to these notable holdings in the general collections,
special science, business and technology collections in other divisions
include manuscript collections of major American scientists, inventors,
engineers, explorers, and business pioneers such as J. Robert Oppenheimer,
Samuel F. B. Morse, Alexander Graham Bell, Simon Newcomb, George
Gamow, Glenn Seaborg, Gifford Pinchot, Charles Lindbergh, Robert
Fulton, Matthew Fontaine Maury, Alice Rivlin, Edward Bernays, Lessing
Julius Rosenwald, Jay Gould, and W. Edwards Deming. The Geography
and Map Division holds the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map Collection
of insurance maps of U.S. cities from the late nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, while the Prints and Photographs Division and the Manuscript
Division hold the Lewis Hine collections of photographs and manuscripts
of the National Child Labor Committee. The Prints and Photographs
Division also holds the Robert Kastor Collection of 194 pen and ink
sketches of famous scientists, and an extensive browse file of remote
sensing images and serial photographs as well as two serial photographic
print collections. Other important collections in divisions outside
of the Science, Technology & Business Division relating to business
include: The Kern County Survey Collection (1880's California–Prints
and Photographs Division); The Modern Music Archive (business papers
of the periodical Modern Music, 1924-1946); and the Arthur P. Schmidt
Company Archive (business papers and music manuscripts–Music Division);
and the business papers of the R. Hoe Co. (development of the powered
printing press–Manuscript Division). Several special collections
in the history of aeronautics include such names as Tissandier, Silberer,
Hornes, Maggs, Langley, Chanute, Hildebrandt, Mitchell, Spaatz, Arnold,
and Sikorsky, as well as the papers and photographs of Wilbur and
Orville Wright and the World War II Strategic Bombing Photographs.

Also, in the history of computers and data processing, the Library
has a significant rare book collection as well as the papers of two
giants in the field, Herman Hollerith (his company later became IBM)
and John von Neumann. These collections are complemented by several
seminal papers in the field of information theory that were first
published in technical report form and are therefore part of the
Library's collections. The Rare Book and Special Collections Division
holds some significant rarities, including, in astronomy, landmark
works of Copernicus and Kepler; in physics, those of Galileo, Newton,
and Maxwell; in chemistry, those of Boyle, Lavoisier, and Mendeleev;
and in economics and business, a vast assortment, including the first
edition of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, primary source materials
on Alexander Hamilton and the founding of the First National Bank,
as well as the first Census of the United States in 1790, and reports
and documents relating to the early development of the American railroad.
Also notable are the Library's holdings documenting the history of
plant exploration and botany, featuring the publications of the great
exploring expeditions, the transactions of botanical societies, and
the color-plate volumes of such artists as Isaac Sprague, Titian
Ramsay Peale, and Pierre Joseph Redoute.

The Division also is the custodian of several special collections,
including technical reports, standards and current foreign gray literature
in the sciences, technology and engineering, and business and economics.
Maintained by the Automation, Collections Support and Technical
Reports Section, the collection includes more than 3.2 million
technical reports and half a million United States national, international
and foreign standards; it is one of the largest and most accessible
collections of its type in the world. United States standards include
those issued by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
and its family of standards-producing organizations like IEEE, SAE,
Underwriters Laboratory, etc, and those of the American Society for
Testing and Materials (ASTM), as well as Government and military
standards. International standards in the collection include those
issued by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO),
the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), and the International
Electrotechnical Commission (ITC). Foreign national standards include
those from Russia (including the former Soviet Union), the Peoples'
Republic of China, France, Germany, Japan, South Africa, and the
United Kingdom.

The technical reports collection includes the microfiche issued
by the National Technical Information Service (NTIS - PB-reports),
the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC - AD-reports), the
Departments of Education (DoEd - ERIC-reports) and Energy (ED-reports),
and NASA (N-reports). Of special interest are the reports published
during and after World War II by the Office of Scientific Research
and development (OSRD) and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) of
which the Library has almost complete sets. Other reports series
include those issued by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
(ASME), the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA),
the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and the Society of Petroleum
Engineers (SPE).